


Distaste

by shinobi93



Category: The Hour
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Series, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-01 23:54:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2792288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinobi93/pseuds/shinobi93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freddie witnesses a man attacked and Bel thinks of the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distaste

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wildestranger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildestranger/gifts).



> Prompted by your interest in the Bel/Freddie dynamic, I ended up writing this little piece about their relationship before the series starts. I hope it is something like you were looking for - I find their dynamic hugely interesting, but have never written for the show before. It was a nice excuse for some foreshadowing and considering their aims/lives before the show's timeline.
> 
> No warnings apply, though it makes reference to violence.

_The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning._ Freddie Lyon is not in a casino, but a West London fish and chip shop at quarter past ten at night. The line from Fleming’s first Bond story still flickers in his brain: the smell of the batter and fried food is nauseating to him now, but Bel told him to eat, and a tiny part of his brain follows commands when given in her final warning tone. In the corner, a man stands muttering to himself, shredded newspaper in his hand. The fate of yesterday’s news, Freddie thinks. The cream linoleum is darkened with grease and it feels like the last place James Bond would ever visit. Then again, nobody reminds Bond to eat. Freddie needs reminders, sometimes. The world draws him in too strongly.

Tonight he saw a man beaten on the streets. The police are saying robbery, but Freddie was there, an accidental scoop for a journalist without a real news outlet, and it was for power, for being different, and robbery was only part of it. Something is growing in London, something nasty. Old lack of acceptance, new faces. Freddie had never seen anyone beaten before his eyes until this evening. He has written about beatings plenty, back at university, angry words in angry student newspapers. ‘Too clever’, they called him, and not as a compliment. When they first met, Bel kept saying, ‘learn when not to talk’. She’s almost given up saying it now. Freddie will never learn.

He pays for the chips he doesn’t want and his feet lead him the wrong way, not back home to his father but to Bel’s flat.

‘Moneypenny!’ he calls out as he knocks on the glass, though he knows how to jimmy the lock to break in. She opens the door with a sigh, then smiles. Her hair looks disheveled, but from running her hands through it, not from sleeping. Tea in one hand, she beckons him in with the other. Refuge and danger. They can be both for each other.

Freddie sleeps on the sofa, barely touched cold chips on the coffee table beside him. He tosses and turns, still hearing the sound of fist against flesh, boot against body, until finally, lulled by the familiar scent of Bel’s flat, he falls asleep.

Bel wakes up early. She turns off her alarm clock so that it won’t startle Freddie in the next room and goes through to make tea. Looking tiny as he always does when sleeping, he clutches something tightly with one hand. Bel walks over towards him and peers at the object: a tiny notebook, tatty leather cover. Inside, she knows, the pages are full of Freddie-scribbles: confusing to the outsider, a selection of words and phrases and occasional diagrams showing whatever stories have caught his attention recently. He doesn’t get to use them, because George will never allow the kind of news that Freddie wants. Bel, with a more practical eye, sees why George won’t, though she herself disagrees. When she’s producer - and it is a when, she must be certain, or she will never get it - she will make time for Freddie’s stories. He sees the right things.

Tea made, she shakes Freddie awake. He blinks at her, vulnerable in those first few seconds, then his brain starts to whir into action, current preoccupations taking over. He’ll be back at the scene of the assault soon enough, Bel knows. They drink tea in silence.

‘He was just lying there, blood everywhere, and people were walking past quickly, trying not to look,’ Freddie blurts out. ‘How can people be so unbothered by the world? By everything terrible that happens in it?’

‘Because people want to believe that it is a good place.’

‘I know why they do it, but how can they bear that? Don’t they want to know what’s going on around them? To care? It’s-’

Bel cuts in and finishes his sentence for him. ‘-why we need the news. I know. _I_ know, Freddie. So let’s go to work and tell it.’

Freddie starts to shake his head fervently. ‘Not like that.’

‘For now, like that.’

Bel looks at him sharply. He knows to concede. They are meant to have a plan, though Freddie Lyon is never the most predictable component in a plan. Spurred on by the previous night and a newly awake mind, Freddie talks on throughout their journey to work. Bel listens and doesn’t contradict him, even when he starts to wander from possibility. Sometimes it is best to let him talk through things. She believes that eventually he will find the right answer, the best path, with a little steering from her if necessary. It is a mark of their friendship that Freddie accepts this steering even when he knows that she’s doing it.

Inside the office, George calls Freddie over to talk, in the same weary tone as usual. He is nervously playing with his tie as he speaks, meaning he knows that Freddie won’t like what he’s got to say. Bel stops at Lix’s desk, unsurprised to see Lix already sitting there working. Lix looks over her glasses at Bel.

‘Coming to work together? Darling, people will talk.’

‘And I’ll correct them. People always talk.’ Bel looks down at the desk. ‘What’s the news today?’

‘George doesn’t want anything about the robbery last night, of course, nor the government negativity. Sporting tournament, a society birth, all of our favourites.’

This is their code: what news are they telling today? Freddie would say, we’re not meant to reassure, we’re meant to incite. Freddie does say that, complete with the angry gesturing of a pen usually.

‘When we’re out of here-’

‘-we’ll make the news,’ Lix completes. This is not a new subject of conversation. They console themselves with it after disheartening days, they declare it drunkenly during post-work drinks, they almost chant it to keep themselves going. Bel knows that Lix is wasted here, that Freddie is skirting the line between employee and ex-employee, and that she wants the chance to prove herself.

Freddie is making a beeline for them. His face looks annoyed, but not fired, Bel decides.

‘He won’t bloody-’

‘-run it. Of course not. Really, darling, what did you expect?’ Lix laughs and looks back down at the stack of paper on her desk.

‘Freddie-’ Bel starts, tone caught between warning and consoling. She encourages him to keep going, so she has to be there to pick up the pieces as well. Freddie has already walked off, however. 

He will sulk all day, throwing looks at George and scribbling in his notebook conspicuously, but he will never admit that it is anything more than a journalistic hunger for the truth to be shared. The sight of the man, bloody and beaten on the pavement, will never be acknowledged as contributing to motivating his annoyance, part of the ever-growing annoyance for the establishment that won’t let the right stories get out there. Freddie has a distaste for the world as it is and for the people watching it spin without seeing what is really happening. He wants the chance to make them aware. He wants to give them the news.


End file.
